Rice decries power-hungry chief executive with unchecked authority

October 13, 2007

I genuinely believe Condoleezza Rice has no idea why so many of us would find this ironic.

The Russian government under Vladimir Putin has amassed so much central authority that the power-grab may undermine Moscow’s commitment to democracy, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Saturday.

“In any country, if you don’t have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development,” Rice told reporters after meeting with human-rights activists.

“I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma,” said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament.

According to the AP report, Rice also told the human-rights activists that democratic institutions are the keys to combating arbitrary power from the state. How helpful.

On a more serious point, McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay has a report on how the Bush administration’s policy towards Russia has been ineffective and based on faulty assumptions from the outset. (In other words, it resembles the administration’s foreign policy towards every other country.)

The Bush administration’s failure to win Russia’s consent to install U.S. missile defenses in its European backyard and a growing list of other disputes suggest that President Bush and his aides have misread the man whose “soul” Bush thought he’d divined when they first met six years ago.

Bush’s strategy on Russia assumed that Russian President Vladimir Putin embraced democracy, wanted integration with the West and sought a “strategic partnership” in which Moscow would acquiesce to U.S. policies such as NATO expansion. Feuds could be resolved through the close personal relationship that Bush believed he had with his Russian counterpart.

Instead, fueled by record oil and natural gas prices and resentment of what he lambasted in February as Bush’s “almost uncontained hyper use of force,” Putin has led global opposition to the U.S. war in Iraq, hosted Palestinians on the U.S. list of terrorist groups, sold anti-aircraft missiles and other arms to Iran and stymied Bush’s drive to tighten U.N. sanctions on the Islamic republic for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment.

Michael McFaul of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, hardly a progressive outlet, said Bush and his foreign policy team “grossly misjudged Putin,” considering him “a good guy and one of us.”

When Rice was in academia, wasn’t Russia her area of expertise?

the pot calling the kettle black…. where have we heard that one before.

  • We cannot afford to continue to have these yahoos in office. Did Bush really believe he could aggressively dominate the world without opposition?
    Rice could substitute Bush’s name for Putin’s in her summary of the grab for executive power.
    Our diplomatic relations are a joke and the need for a civil hand in foreign policy is crucial at this time in our history. Will Bush single handedly bring back the cold war era? How much more damage must we endure before we are rid of this man?
    Maybe Pelosi could include praying for Bush to grow a soul while she prays nightly that God grants our soldiers kill more of them than their soldiers kill of us while they pray.
    She prefers to pray rather than DO anything about it as God suggests.
    I hate that all I can do is sit by and watch as Bush continues to destroy our nation.

  • I am continually baffled that neocons seem to have no perception of irony, when their behavior so consistently exemplifies it. How could Rice even have said these things with a straight face?

  • the pot calling the kettle black…. where have we heard that one before. -bruno

    They’re just jealous. They see Putin and Ahmadinejad and just get all green with fascist envy.

  • You have to give Rice credit, at least she’s right about Putin now (and for all we know this has been her belief all along and her boss wasn’t inclined to let her share it with the rest of us). Now if only she would use this newfound value system to reflect upon what her employers have done to our own governmental traditions.

  • The monster chimp didn’t give himself all this power to leave it to the next
    president. He will use it.

    I believe he will declare martial law before or right after the 2008 election and
    keep himself in power by force. Probably using Blackwater forces.

    He’ll either cause another 9/11 “terror attack” , blame Iran and bomb Iran
    or he’ll just bomb Iran outright and put all the “dissenters” in the FEMA
    detention centers he’s had Halliburton build all over the country.

    We have a sick, mass murdering monster running this country.

    The fact that I’m even saying this kind of stuff in America truly sickens me.
    I never dreamed I’d see this happen.

    Google videos: 9/11 Press for Truth, Loose Change 2nd Edition,
    9/11 Mysteries, Terror Storm, America: Freedom to Fascism

  • How could we not expect Condi to overlook the failings of her “husband”?

    Well, in order for countries to come together, the first thing that must happen is leaders must make up their mind that they want this to happen. And the more I get to know President Putin, the more I get to see his heart and soul, and the more I know we can work together in a positive way.

    Bush is demonstrably a dunce and a sucker. Condi’s performance vis a vis Russia, supposedly her area of expertise, mirrors her performance in every other aspect of diplomacy and statecraft.

    All in all, a confederacy of dunces.

  • All hail me! I’m Warrior Princess Condi.
    I’m loyal to and lie for my bad boy GWB.
    I love the Party and appearing on teevee.
    All hail me! I’m Warrior Princess Condi.

  • Dennis, Bush a sucker? hah You got that right…

    Glenn Kessler – WP reporter, part of two Pulitzer Prize winning teams and author of “The Confidante: Condoleezza Rice and the Creation of the Bush Legacy” – said this on C-Span re: Bush seeing into Putin’s “soul”:

    http://www.btcnews.com/btcnews/1752

    quoting Kessler:

    “[A]t his very first meeting with Putin, Putin told [Bush] a story about a cross that he had blessed in Israel that used to belong to his grandmother. People that are aware of this conversation at the State Department feel that the President got played by Putin. There is no cross. There was just some KGB story that he made up. But it had a real impact on President Bush. That’s when he walked out and said, ‘I looked into his soul and decided this is the guy I can work with.’ And for the longest time in the first term, if you talked to then National Security Adviser Rice, she always painted the relationship with Russia in very rosy terms.…”

  • Putin would be under the smoldering remains of his blessed KGB if there had been an all-out push to replace oil with an alternative-fuels bundle five years ago—but King George killed that chance. Now we’ll get to deal with a new Cold War, and an arms-race against a Kremlin that has the financial muscle to wade into the arena and go head-to-head with the US.

    Russia’s already deep into development on passive radar/sonar that makes our stealth technologies literally non-functional. They’ve already gone into production on nexgen ICBM delivery systems.

    Poland ins’t part of the USSR any more; Putin needs to get a grip. I say, build the damned missile sites. If “Vlad the Putz” wants to aim a missile at DC, then I can aim one right back at Moscow—or better yet, his precious little oil and gas fields. Put a solid threat of annihilation on Putin’s “Russian Prosperity,” and the Russian people will toss him on the ash-heap right quick….

    Bush made the problems. He can’t fix them, and if he sticks around he won’t be able to blame them on a successor. Come January 2009, he’ll bail on the Republic like the tail-tucking, yellow-dag coward that he is.

  • Poland isn’t part of the USSR any more; Putin needs to get a grip. I say, build the damned missile sites. — Steve, @10

    Neither is Poland a total vassal of US (though it’s not always all that obvious ) Most of Poland — both the politicians and the population — doesn’t want the damned missile sites on its territory, especially with Putin hot and bothered about them. People don’t, actually, care to be put “between the hammer and the anvil” (“between a rock and a hard place” is, I think, English language equivalent) in the tug of ego wars between Russia and US.

    During the student “disquiet” (March 1968), the gate to the Warsaw University sported a banner which said: “Will trade freedom for a better geographical position”. Being wedged between Germany and Russia had always meant a balancing act of trying to be agreeable to both neighbours both of whom are past invaders. Going with US on the missile sites, directly against Russia, would be “asking for it”. And while the current crop of Polish politicians isn’t, exactly, “Mensa material”, *that* stupid they’re not, either.

  • Libra, I didn’t say “Put in the missiles;” I said “Build the sites.” Give Putin a “Cuba-esque crisis” and let him think about it for a while. He’s willing to say things about what he’ll do if the missiles DO go in; let’s see what he’s got to offer in return for keeping them from being installed on the bases.

    Maybe he’ll stop using oil as a political weapon against those former “pieces/parts of the USSR….”

  • I don’t know whether to laugh or cry – I think this administration is totally irony-proof, so there is no danger that Condi or anyone else will ever make a connection between what she said about Russia and what is happening here. None.

    I’m wondering if anyone in the administration is having any regret about basing a policy on what Bush thinks he saw when he looked Putin in the eye; Gates might be doing some eye-rolling right about now, but Rice probably thinks Putin has let the US down by failing to live up to her honey’s impression of him.

    Another front we have to hope holds together for another 15 months. Great.

  • the Bush administration’s policy towards Russia has been ineffective and based on faulty assumptions from the outset. (In other words, it resembles the administration’s foreign policy towards every other country.)

    But much more shameful in this case, given that our Condi is supposed to be a Russia expert.

  • Pingback: Shocker: Condi Rice Troubled By Bush’s Broad Powers

  • Republican modus operandus once again: accuse others of the action of which you are guilty. Not a surprise at all.

  • Now that Ms. Rice has stated that the US will not overtly be working to destabilize Russia socially and poltically, perhaps it’s time for President Putin to authorize overt assistance to the groups fighting Zionist control of the US government?

  • I have always had to assume that an ignorant no-brain like Rice must be W’s Bloe Job queen and not much else.

  • Steve said “Poland ins’t part of the USSR any more; Putin needs to get a grip. I say, build the damned missile sites. If “Vlad the Putz” wants to aim a missile at DC, then I can aim one right back at Moscow—or better yet, his precious little oil and gas fields. Put a solid threat of annihilation on Putin’s “Russian Prosperity,” and the Russian people will toss him on the ash-heap right quick….”

    Steve, you know nothing at all about oil and gas in Russia, and you know nothing about whether or not your war criminal nation’s nukes would work. Because they are all pinpointed by EMP weapons, I don’t think they will.

    You have nothing to fight Russia with, Steve.

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  • Putin seems to exercise power much more responsibly and adroitly than Bush. I’d rather have Putin that Bush (or Howard or Brown) any day.

  • One must wonder what the NWO was thinking when they picked this congenital idiot (inbred) to lead us in the corporate takeover of the world… we’re DOOMED

  • in response to Steve at #10:

    You hit the nail on the head!!!

    Energy is the true underpinning of the strength of money… the cheaper that energy is the more buying power that money has and the stronger our middle class would be as a results

    The strength of Democracy is directly related to the size and strenght of the middle class and the greater is our national leverage on the world stage… {:o))

    Any questions???

  • Rice is an imbecile. In no way is she is intelligent or experienced enough for the position of Secretary of State. This is affirmative action at its worst.

  • ffs, Shouldnt we be glad that Rice just came out of hiding? Cut her some slack, she is only wrong 99% of the time.

    After all, she isnt part of the real scheme by our REAL presidente Calderon to take over the US by the use of mass hynosis is she? I mean, isnt he parading mexicans over the border to put us to sleep? How could Putin ever match up to that? All he has is bombs after all.

  • All Putin has to do to turn Bush into a quivering manure pile is give 400 nuclear weapons to Iran like the US did to Israel. As for Irak and Afganistan, I read the insurgants have been gathering up radioactive Depleted Uranium dust and firing it into US bases. Return to sender!

  • Steve in # 10.
    Poland ins’t part of the USSR any more; Putin needs to get a grip. I say, build the damned missile sites. If “Vlad the Putz” wants to aim a missile at DC, then I can aim one right back at Moscow—or better yet, his precious little oil and gas fields. Put a solid threat of annihilation on Putin’s “Russian Prosperity,” and the Russian people will toss him on the ash-heap right quick….

    You were joking , yes? If not, you need to read ‘The Authoritarians’, global domination game in the last few chapters of the book. The stategy you espouse had the Upper Uppers on the brink of world-wide nuclear war in a very short time.
    DC

  • Though Ms Rice claims to be an expert on Russia, she seems to have little clue of the Russia that doesn’t come through in history books. Russia has a soft spot for despots. Moreover, we shouldn’t be fooled by our own newspapers. Clinton touted Yeltsin, but the Russians hated the man (i lived there at the time) and just accepted that he stole the elections and sold the nation’s wealth to Westerners and Jews (Russia is generally racist) for a pittance. Few in Russia would argue that Putin is not authoritarian, but compared to the other examples of authoritarianism that they have lived through, he’s downright benevolent. And comparing life for the average Russian during the 90’s to life now, it becomes easy to see why he has support…and he does have real support.

    Regardless of pronouncements, the cold war did not end. We kept it going and we are still trying to hem the bear in. We said we wouldn’t encroach on Russia’s traditional sphere of influence via NATO. We lied. Those missile shield bases are aggressive, they would give us a real first strike capability…and who among us thinks that our current leaders don’t think in terms of nuclear first strikes?

    Bush lied, he didn’t see a kindred soul. He looked into Putin’s eyes and saw a professional…he was scared. We have done our best to back Russia into a corner and now we have the early 1950’s playing out all over again: Russia and China working together, belligerent diplomatic talk, etc. I don’t know who “lost” Russia, but we had our chance at peace and flushed it. Imagine if we had worked with Russia in the 90’s, all that oil and gas might have been used to end run OPEC and the fundamentalists that it supports. So maybe this tone with Russia is us doing the bidding of the Saudis?

    I will tell you this, V.V. Putin is not afraid of us and he is certainly angling to bring us down in ways we haven’t even fathomed yet.

  • “power-hungry chief executive”
    Now that must have been hard to say with a straight face.

    Hey, the hard questions first, eh?

  • steve # 10

    …Put a solid threat of annihilation on Putin’s “Russian Prosperity,” and the Russian people will toss him on the ash-heap right quick….

    ,,ya just like the americans did when someone illegally occupying the white house bankrupted the country for generations..stole every nickel taxpayers had and put it into the bank accounts of haliburton kbr carlyle

    …or in other words i wouldn’t count on it

  • 5:01 pm, Steve said
    Put a solid threat of annihilation on Putin’s “Russian Prosperity,” and the Russian people will toss him on the ash-heap right quick

    Yes just like when Herr Hitler threatened Russians with annihilation. That worked out quite fine for him, the Russians just rolled over and played dead. Or maybe not. Maybe the Russians were so angry that they marched all the way across Europe from Stalingrad to Berlin and blasted open the Fuhrer’s bunker only to find out he was such a coward that he did not want to pay for his crimes and committed suicide as his country lay in ruins.

  • And remember the Mongols? Remember they had that big Empire until the Russians wiped it off the face of the earth. And of course Napoleon Bonaparte he marched into Russia with the biggest Army ever assembled in Europe, and left Russia freezing and hungry with 90% of that big Army decimated. Yeah, it really works out well for Superpowers to threaten Russia.

  • at 5:01 pm, Steve said:
    Poland ins’t part of the USSR any more; Putin needs to get a grip. I say, build the damned missile sites. If “Vlad the Putz” wants to aim a missile at DC, then I can aim one right back at Moscow—or better yet, his precious little oil and gas fields.

    What purpose do you think those 400 or so Minuteman III ICBM’s serve in the US? What purpose do you think the roughly 240 Trident II submarine ballistic missiles serve? Each carries a payload at least 40 times larger than the Hiroshima bomb. Russia also has similar missiles in her inventory. This purpose is called Mutually Assured Destruction, to prevent the Nuclear aggression you are suggesting. Both Russia and the US can hit one another from their own territory, they no longer need missile bases near the enemy border for MAD. The Cuban(and Turkish) Missile Crisis was in an era when missiles could barely hit targets 4,000km away. Today ICBM’s have ranges of 10,000km plus.

    When you build Missile “Defense” Systems on the borders of a country you intend on having “first strike” capability. Which means you want to strike the enemy with a limited chance of the enemy being able to shoot back. When and if he does you want to destroy those remnants of your attack. This is what these systems in Poland, and Japan, and Alaska are for. It looks like to Russia that the US wants to destroy Russia so that she does not offer resistance to the ultimate US dream of Manifest Destiny(a global US Empire).

  • The Putin “power grab” that is almost funny. When Yeltsin was firing tank shells into his own Parliament the US government was not complaining, in fact they were cheering on that drunk. “Go ahead Boris, kill some more of your people, you are doing a great job!”

    Now that the Tank Division Filibusters are over and the Russian Economy has grown 500% in 7 years the US government is feeling uneasy.

    The US government misses the good old days of hyperinflation, 90% poverty, and crony capitalism in Russia. That is why they want Putin gone. They would blame him for sinking the Titanic if they could. If he leaves, they are thinking, we can send in Boris Berezovsky to finish the job he started in the 90’s.

  • In life, I have found that people who tend to accuse others of improprietes (either founded or unfounded) tend to be gulity of the very act they are charging othes with. This article is a prime example of that tendency.

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